Note: If you haven’t been to the first jazz swing tutorial yet, we encourage you to start there: Jazz Swing Tutorial No. 1
Jazz Swing on Scales
by Eddie Lewis
This is the second tutorial in our Jazz Swing series. In this tutorial we will discuss jazz swing on scales. You may have noticed that the previous tutorial only covered exercises with repeated notes, which made the technique level lower, so you could concentrate more on your swing.
Now we are increasing the technique just a tiny bit. The exercises in this jazz swing on scales tutorial does not repeat notes, which is why we are calling it “jazz swing on scales”.
Patience
I touched on this a little in the first tutorial, but it’s important enough to stress again here. Done correctly, these exercises take a lot of time. I haven’t made the video yet, but the previous jazz swing tutorial was like 45 minutes long.
The exercises should each be repeated ten times. I encourage you to not skip ahead. Focus on my style and try to match it perfectly.
A lot of people have the wrong philosophy about repetition. They have the philosophy that says, “I’m going to keep trying until I get it right”. This philosophy does NOT produce great musicianship.
A better philosophy is one which says, “I’m going to get this right, THEN I’m going to repeat it a bunch of times.”
It’s the repetition that makes things automatic. If you repeat something wrong, until you get it right, then the resulting automatic behavior is to play it wrong. In contrast, if you learn to play it correctly, then repeat it a bunch of times, then the resulting behavior is to perform it correctly, automatically.
And this is worth the price of your patience.
Remember that swing is a rudimentary skill for all jazz musicians. It’s worth investing the time to be a master of that skill.
Think about it. This is the time of year when the high school jazz students are working on their Texas All State Jazz auditions. What good is it to work so diligently on the swing etude, if when you get to the audition, you still can’t swing properly.
Swing is to jazz musicians what tone is to the classical musicians. There are varying degrees of how good you are at swing. Why wouldn’t you want to be GREAT at swing if your going to be a jazz musician?
So it makes sense to invest the time into this rudimentary skill. This second tutorial, Jazz Swing on Scales, is the best second step.
Another Note About Repetition
There are some well-meaning educators on YouTube who I have heard say things like, “don’t just mindlessly repeat stuff when you practice.” I suspect that their good intentions sometimes have negative effects on the students. The students think that these educators are saying “don’t repeat stuff when you practice”. I truly believe that’s not what they are trying to say.
First of all, I personally don’t like the word “mindless” in this context. Our ultimate goal as musicians is to perform “mindlessly”. And you cannot reach that goal without mindless practice.
Mindless practice in my opinion is when you begin daydreaming while you repeat something. The execution of the thing you are practicing has become so automatic, because of the repetition, that you don’t have to consciously think about what you are playing, and it comes out correctly anyway.
To practice this kind of mindlessness, I used to do simple algebra problems in my head while I played my Tonalization Studies. That’s the kind of mindlessness we should all be striving for, automatically performing correctly without thinking about what we are doing.
This is not something you can accomplish without mindless repetition. Always remember that repetition is what makes what we practice automatic. Repeating music or exercises “correctly” leads to performing music correctly. Repeating music or exercises “incorrectly”, likewise, leads to performing incorrectly.
I suspect that what they means when they say, “don’t just mindlessly repeat stuff”, I think they are saying, “don’t repeat without a plan”.
This Jazz Swing on Scales tutorial has a plan built into it. It is an expansion exercise, just like the first jazz swing tutorial. All expansion exercises are designed to increase technique levels slowly in order to increase your accuracy.
Prerequisite
If you haven’t done the exercises on video one, and you are serious about mastering jazz swing, then please do not use this second tutorial yet. Even if you think that the exercises in the first jazz swing tutorial are too easy, do them anyway, for all the reasons I listed above in this article.
Jazz Swing on Scales Video
The following embedded video is a play-along exercise video. It is presented in “call and response” format. This is important because you need to match my style on the swing. Pay very close attention to the length of the notes, when I accent and how hard I tongue. Try to match these in every way.
